Welcome Lucy Montgomery, Our New Curatorial Assistant
Hi! My name is Lucy Montgomery (she/her) and I am the Bodnar Post-Baccalaureate Curatorial Assistant at SCMA until 2027. I’m excited to join the entering cohort of SCMA post-baccs with Grace Sinclair (she/her) in Marketing and Communications and Lilly Watson ‘25 (they/them) in Education.
I grew up in Berkeley, California and moved to eastern Massachusetts where I recently went to Wellesley College. I graduated this last spring with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies and a minor in Art History. My academic study focused on North African and Mediterranean history, especially Arabic language and translation, and I only recently started to consider a career in museums.
I have always loved visiting museums and the complex combination of research and design involved in any exhibition. Many of my family members have arts or design backgrounds, so I’ve been surrounded by visual work and analysis my entire life, but didn’t consider my own academic interest in art until my last year of college. My first window into museum work actually began in Tangier, Morocco.
Lucy and her coworker on the rooftop terrace of the Tangier American Legation Museum in Morocco.
During my sophomore year at Wellesley, I looked for summer opportunities that would enhance my Arabic study and love for language learning, and landed at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM) the following summer. The organization TALIM includes a museum, research library, and cultural center, and I got a sense for all their responsibilities during the summer I was there. I mostly contributed to a cataloging project for their art collection, but also set-up for summer concerts, lectures, and fundraising events.
Lucy at her desk at the Peabody Essex Museum.
I loved all the different facets of working at a small museum, and how many people I was able to meet, and was inspired to find another museum experience. The next summer, I interned at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, MA with curator Karina Corrigan. At PEM, I joined a very fast-paced museum environment. Some highlights from my time there included editing exhibition text, joining design team meetings, and handling certain art objects. That summer was a crash-course in the various duties of a museum curator from academic research, gallery design, and donor relations to leading tours and writing proposals. Every day was excitingly different and that’s exactly what inspired me to look for museum positions after graduation.
Lucy helping arrange objects in a display cabinet at the Peabody Essex Museum.
I’m very excited to join SCMA in the curatorial department for the next two years and am looking forward to meeting students, faculty and staff alike. I’ve already enjoyed finding my way around an institution very similar to my undergraduate college and learning more about the unique responsibilities of a collegiate museum. Among other things, I will be in charge of organizing blog posts around museum events, student stories, and art acquisitions. Be on the lookout for updates!